The Trump administration has declared war on drug cartels, labeling them “foreign terrorist organizations” and deploying military firepower, including F-35B jets, to the Caribbean in a massive escalation of force. That’s right, we’re not talking about a new, better-funded DEA program or more border patrols; President Trump is straight-up using the military’s most advanced stealth fighters, like the F-35Bs recently sent to Puerto Rico in September 2025, to fight what they’re now calling “narco-terrorists.”
It honestly feels like the playbook from the post-9/11 War on Terror has been dusted off and applied directly to drug trafficking, and it may be because Trump can’t stop bombing civilian boats. The entire shift comes from the administration’s new view of these cartels. As FBI Director Kash Patel put it recently, we “must treat them like the al-Qaidas of the world because that’s how they’re operating.”
